


Brother

by panicky_pancakes



Series: No Edits No Redrafts [2]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Brotherly Love, Friendship, I have thirty minutes to write this, M/M, Other, This is going to be a pile of hot trash, but alas, no edits no redrafts, no redrafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28896933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panicky_pancakes/pseuds/panicky_pancakes
Summary: The rooftop. Where Jack, who doesn't have a family, gains one - and where Crutchie, who chose to leave his, finds another.
Relationships: Jack Kelly & Crutchie Morris (brotherly)
Series: No Edits No Redrafts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2128449
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Brother

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the deal: I will be writing this in my free period, which currently has thirty minutes left. I don't have time to redraft or plan a plot, so this will be a pure, mainly unedited brain-child. I'm writing it in Notes App. Enjoy.

Jack had thought that the covers were spread out. But, evidenced by the cold metal he felt on his back, he’d misjudged. With a sigh, he sat up and attempted to pull the rough canvas over the exposed part of metal.

Jack’s rooftop — his one and only safe haven. Of course, he could only sleep there in the summer; New York winters were a bitch. The summer air had begun to fade into crisp autumn, but Jack was determined to use the rooftop every night he could. Nobody would disturb a fifteen-year-old kid sleeping on a metal grate five stories in the air.

Or so he thought.

A loud clang sounded near the stairs, stirring Jack out of half-sleep. With an exasperated sigh, he propped himself up on his elbow and glared at the head poking up out of the stairs.

“What?”

“Oh, hey, gosh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know someone was up here.” The kid pulled himself up onto the metal platform, revealing a slightly twisted leg.

“How’d you even get up here?” Jack had to admit, he was not in the mood to be nice at that moment.

“Carefully,” the kid said with a joking grin.

“Delanceys get you?” Jack asked. He himself had a permanently crooked nose from a late-night encounter with one Morris Delancey.

“Who?”

“Never mind.” What newsie didn’t know the Delanceys? “Polio, then?”

“Yes.”

The kid’s blond curls stuck out from under his cap, reminding Jack just a little bit of Race. Freckles were spattered across his face like stars, and someone had carved a smiley face into his wooden crutch.

“I’m Jack.”

“I’m…” the boy trailed off, looking to the side. Jack watched his eyes land on his crutch. “Uh… you can call me Crutchie.”

“Okay, Crutchie.”

Jack knew what it was like to change your name. He suspected Crutchie had similar reasons. A lot of newsies went by aliases to escape their past, whether it was bad parents, arrest warrants… the list went on. _Hell,_ he thought, _Race even changed his name ‘cause he wasn’t a girl no more._ Jack himself remembered a childhood where his name had been Cillian. The name his father had cursed every day, spat it out like a dirty word until he died. It was then that he chose to be Jack. He wondered what Crutchie’s story was.

“There’s one thing I gotta ask you,” Crutchie said a few nights later. “Is it better here?”

Jack frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Better than my family.” He sighed. “‘Course, you don’t know them.”

“No, I don’t,” Jack agreed. “But if you’re here… ‘nd you wanna be called Crutchie instead of your real name… then, yeah.” He smiled at him. “We’re better. It’s better.”

“So will you be my new brother?”

“Yeah. We’s a family here, Crutchie. You can

**Author's Note:**

> Did you like it? Tell me!  
> This work was inspired by the song "Brother" by the Rural Alberta Advantage, but it is not a songfic.


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